


Time is an Illusion

by ItCanGetWorse



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aliens, Galra Empire, Gen, Imprisonment, Kerberos Mission, may add more tags later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7878022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItCanGetWorse/pseuds/ItCanGetWorse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Time is an illusion.” Albert Einstein. Lucky for Einstein, Shiro was around to test this phrase. He’d learned the reality of Einstein’s quote early-on in his space travel. </p><p>Originally meant for the voltron week day 1 prompt space/travel</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time is an Illusion

“Time is an illusion.” Albert Einstein. Lucky for Einstein, Shiro was around to test this phrase. He’d learned the reality of Einstein’s quote early-on in his space travel.

On the Kerberos mission, it was hard enough distinguishing what would have been days and what would have been nights. Back then, they’d had a 24 hour clock and pre programmed lighting to help them along.

Shiro remembered being so elated on launch day that he stayed up for a bit longer than he should have and fell asleep at his workstation. When you're in zero gravity, you don't feel the weight of your body getting tired, especially when you're hyped up on adrenaline. There's no table to hit your head on and wake you up, so you literally fall asleep in the middle of typing. Shiro got used to leaving things to float in the air without worrying about them spilling or falling. The water in your glass could easily be scooped out of the air and back into the cup when you wanted a drink. It felt so surreal, it was wonderful.

When he was small, he would read anything about space that he could get his hands on. He’d watched footage of the first moon landing countless times and knew all the original NASA missions by heart. He’d dress up in a homemade pilot suit and sit in his cardboard box spaceship with his little brother, Keith. The two of them would pretend to meet aliens and imitate jedi lightsaber sounds. The day they visited the NASA museum was one of the best days of his life!

If Shiro thought getting into the garrison was a dream come true, being on the Kerberos mission was like being inside his own personal Wonderland (although he didn’t show his delight much on the outside). The things he’d been training for and dreaming about for years had finally come to pass.

But like all good things, Shiro’s Wonderland came to an end. The moment they were imprisoned by the Galra, space became an entirely different ball game.

For starters, the gravity had been disorienting enough on Kerberos after months of space travel, but the artificial gravity on the Galra ships was somehow worse. The Galra were so tall they probably evolved on a planet with less of a gravitational pull than Earth.

It felt wrong, almost indescribably wrong it was so subtle. You felt lighter; it wasn't enough to make you float, but it was enough to give you bad cases of vertigo if you moved too fast. Shiro and the Holts were sick for days trying to get used to it. They would have been fine if it was naturally occurring gravity, but because it was artificial, it made their human sensory systems do loop the loops. They’d never been exposed to it before, so their bodies had no idea what to do about it.

Shiro wondered at first why their wardens didn't just dispose of them. They were sick; of what use were they to them?

Then the Galra decided separate the three of them. It was then that Shiro realized these aliens had never seen humans before. They were not only prisoners, they were specimens too, specimens meant to be studied.

Shiro had been taken to a white, sterile room filled to the brim with complicated machinery. He was x-rayed (or something similar to being x-rayed), pricked with needles, weighed, measured, scanned every which way, subjected to every test known to man and unknown to man. Shiro was kept in the “lab” for days with no rest and no food—there was no time for it—the list of tests the Galrans had lined up for him seemed endless.

When Shiro, Matt, and his father were finally returned to their cell, all three of them were thin and exhausted. They curled up in one corner of the cell together like frightened animals, fearing what their captors might do next. Shiro had been exhausted and wired, somewhere between falling asleep and flinching awake. Matt had managed to sleep huddled between his father and Shiro, it was heartbreaking to see such a bright spirit so terrified.

After their examinations, Shiro felt as if he had betrayed Earth somehow. He felt extremely exposed by letting them study him, like he’d told a vital secret he wasn't supposed to tell.

They were eventually back to full health, now used to the odd feel of artificial gravity. Matt’s father was taken out of the cell early. Shiro and Matt had assumed the Galra were going to test him more, at least that’s what they thought, until Matt’s father never came back.

As Shiro and Matt were being loaded onto a new ship with some other prisoners, Shiro heard his crewmate sobbing quietly behind him. The younger Holt hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

From then on, Shiro made it his mission to shield Matt as much as he could from the guards. Wherever they were now, wherever Matt’s father had been taken, he promised he would get them home someday. He vowed with everything he had left. He crossed his heart and hoped to live.

Things only got worse from there. He got separated from Matt the first day he went into the arena. Later he found out that Matt was sent off to the same place his father had gone. Perhaps that was for the best, they were family, at least they would have each other.

It occurred to Shiro after a couple weeks that there was nobody left for him anymore.

As time dragged on it became harder and harder to remember who he used to be. When you’re surrounded by people who are anything but human, you tend to forget what it is to be human. Shiro caught himself picking up mannerisms from the other prisoners, and eventually the Galra, which scared him the most.

Shiro was able to estimate the hours, days, and weeks for a while after Matt was gone. It made fighting in the arena easier.

_It’s a shorter fight than usual._

_You only have to last a couple more minutes._

_Just a couple more._

That was before he got knocked out for the first time. That was before he got his scar. That was before he lost a part of himself, quite literally.

He’d been a plaything of the Galra for so long now; it made it impossible to tell time. Nobody would speak to him except for the druids and the other prisoners. The druids never answered his questions and the prisoners had even less of a sense of time than he did. He’d never felt so lost in his life.

_How long have I been awake?_

_How long since I last ate?_

_How long until I go back into the arena?_

It was like those lulls in summer in which you don’t have events marking the passing days. You seem to waste away a little bit inside your house, disconnected from the world. You accidentally mash two days together or miss one entirely without knowing.

_Didn’t I battle that monster yesterday?_

_Or was it last month?_

_Is it an entirely new creature?_

There was no sun to tell you when to wake up, no soothing moon to tell you when to go to sleep, just the endless expanse of glimmering stars.

Shiro often caught glimpses of the outside when he was being taken to and from the arena. He sometimes appreciated the look of the soaring nebulas and blazing suns; they were beautiful. It was awe-inspiring. It was hope.

Other times he couldn’t bring himself to look at the vast expanse. It was suffocating. It was torturous. It was _so unfair_.

Earth was out there, his home, the luscious trees, the blue skies, the smell of ozone after it rained.

If there was one thing he didn’t expect to miss, it was sunsets. Sunsets meant you got to go home and rest after a hard day’s work. Sunsets meant watching the gorgeous paintings of light and clouds with loved ones. Sunsets meant waiting for the stars to come out to send you to bed.

Space was magnificent, but all Shiro wanted was to go home. To see other humans again, to touch them, to remember what it meant to be a Homo sapien. Shiro realized that even though we murder and manipulate one another, humans need other humans. The rules of space where so familiar to Shiro now, he almost didn’t remember what it was like to live on Earth anymore. Even so, that never stopped him from trying to go back.

It was a rush when he managed to hijack a ship. It took hours of evading the Galra and scouring star maps to find his planet, but he did. He opened his eyes to his own kind. But they were in suits! They were wary of him. It was the worst thing in the world.

_They didn’t want him back._

_They don’t understand!_

He opened his eyes again to his little brother, it was the best thing in the world.

The only problem was that when he tried to remember anything in the past couple years, he drew a hazy blank. It was almost a relief to have forgotten it all; he may not remember it, but he knew it had been worse than the deepest circle of hell.

He was tempted to ask how long he’d been gone. He found that he didn’t want to know, he could see it in his rescuers’ eyes. He didn’t need to ask.

Shiro did not get to touch the soil or hear the ocean, but at least he had other humans now.

It wasn’t long until he found himself on another alien warship, on another alien planet. Shiro only hoped this time would be different than the first. As soon as he had arrived home, space tore him away from it once again.

This time was different. So refreshingly, relievingly different.

He met Allura and Coran, those who had been oppressed by the Galra themselves. Those who missed their home. Those who had suffered as he had.

Allura was brilliant, she took charge, she was strong, she helped him. She was one of the kindest people Shiro had met in a long, long while. Allura knew how to comfort him when the amnesia and the battles and the trauma hit him like a titanium alloy wall. Allura knew how to act when he was close to breaking down. All because she knew exactly what his former captors had done. They had done a lot of it to her, too.

Coran was also brilliant, he specialized in getting everyone’s mind off of things, at looking at the glass half full, which Shiro was eternally grateful for. Whenever he noticed Shiro having a hard time, he gave him that refreshing green drink that was usually for healing pod patients.

If Shiro let himself fall back into those habits he’d learned during his imprisonment around them, well, the Alteans didn’t say anything about it.

He could fulfill his promise he made to Matt, back when he’d made it, he didn’t know how he would do it, he just knew he would. Shiro couldn’t help himself from doing everything in his power to aid Pidge in getting her family back. He didn’t want to be able to help himself.

Space brings whole new rules and whole new worlds to your fingertips, but it also brings whole new enemies. Shiro had to lead this team, he had to make it work, for the Holts, for the universe, and if he ever wanted to feel the crunch of a maple leaf beneath his foot again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any comments or critique would be much appreciated, I hope you enjoyed it ^^


End file.
